To not understand claims that life admin is 'not a thing'

[LabradorsInThePond]

I keep reading this on MN threads about organisation, time management etc. And that the life admin tasks of renewing insurances and checking mortgage rates can't take up that much time. But I spend a huge amount of time in the throes of life admin. We live a pretty normal, busy family life. I work 4 days in a professional role and can easily spend the 5th day (or at least half of it) in the throes of dreaded life admin.

My list tomorrow extends to twenty three separate items. None of which involve renewing insurances, but they do include buying clothing items (Scout shirt etc.), paying instrument hire, photocopying medical reports for school, booking airport parking, collecting worming tablets, booking a restaurant, buying zoo tickets, arranging a delivery of flowers for mum's birthday, an online grocery shop, buying a thank you gift, arranging a birthday party, booking a roofer, buying new windscreen wipers, emailing the GP, updating kids' Nimbl cards, finding a way to teach DS about dividing decimals, paying various people online etc.

None of these are yearly tasks, and next week there will be another 23 items to complete. It is relentless. DH does most of the house and long-term financial admin and he's also executing his father's too-complicated will, which makes my 23 items look like peanuts.

Do we just have an over-committed life, or does anyone one else find (what others consider non-existent) life admin burdensome and time-consuming? What am I doing wrong here?

What admin does a 3 year old have?

Most of those are very short tasks, you could probably do a few every day rather than commiting a half day to it.
I work 5 days a week 10-11 hour days and then have cleaning/laundry etc to do. I squeeze those mini tasks in as and when I have a moment, I certainly don't have a spare half a say to dedicate to it. Since Monday I've done at least 15 tasks not dissimilar to your examples but I havent set aside time for them, I think you are over complicating things.

You can't seriously be saying that downloading an app and printing off some certificates (there is a direct link on the NHS app to do this) along with printing off a car insurance certificate are worthy of calling a task?
What would you call it then? If it was something needing doing in the office, would it be someone's task to do it or not? If it takes someone's time to do it, and it needs to be done, then it's a task.

I can certainly do that if I'm at home and I'm not needing to leave the house for work or to collect the dc. I don't know if it will take 5 mins or an hour (call centres do not appear to be back to normal working yet) so can only usefully start such a job when I have an hour available without needing to be anywhere else, which I can't do on a working day and can only do within the first two hours of a the half day I have off work. So not as easy as put it on speaker and get on with your life.

@Waxonwaxoff0

this week for a 3 year old:

• nursery RSVP for Jubilee event
• make a crown & sort outfit for above plus buy food & coordinate with others for BYO picnic
• rsvp to birthday party, buy & wrap gift
• nanny time sheet & PAYE plus some employee pension email I haven’t dealt with yet
• new clothes & shoes ordering for summer
• hair cut

I am so enjoying the people who are outraged by my list. This was today’s list - of course many of those things are monthly tasks - but next week, or tomorrow, there will be more! It’s not that any of those tasks are onerous, is it? It’s that there are so many of them, and so much to remember and plan for. I have a job. It is a demanding job. I have four kids. I have cleaning and all the rest of it.

Loving loving loving the person saying ‘why would you put off buying sun cream until The day before’ 😂😂😂😂 i didn’t put it off - but stuff runs out, and when you get to the holiday, you realise you have a list as long as your arm of things you need to do!

Most of all I just really enjoy all these people who are OUTRAGED that other people aren’t as fucking amazing and super organised and generally wonderful at everything as them 😂

Back here in the world of people who have enough empathy to say ‘yeah, some days there’s loads to do’ without signalling their own massively superior life skills, I think mental load is real, burnout is real, and if somebody says ‘is it ok if sometimes find this really tough’ it’s just polite to say ‘yeah, sometimes there is shit loads to remember and do when you run a household’ and not be a total wanker about it 😂😂😂😂😂

OK. I've never had a nanny so wouldn't know about that. The rest of those things don't take that long though, aside from making a crown.

Agree, I deal with most of admin. It is a lot of work. Only yesterday spent hours dealing with passport application for the kids. Just sorting out photos that they would accept took forever. But there is the everyday stuff that really addsup. There is always something that needs buying, paying returning, researching, fixing, renewing. And I have all the bills on direct debt.

But you've chosen to have 4 kids. Obviously that is going to come with more stress. I'm just saying, it's all about choices.

I don’t think I have any life admin

Yes, fair enough. It would be the same in a hospital where it would be an anaesthetist's task to make sure someone is breathing.

I have to do that too, so I'll put that on a list as a task I need to take care of: 'breathing'...

It can go just above 'blinking', I think.

Lololololol ‘life admin does not exist - it’s all in people’s heads. ALSO, if you have life admin it’s because you made bad choices (but still, it doesn’t exist’.

ha ha ha.

Many of the things I do I would have to do no matter how many children I had had.

And I’m not complaining. My four-child family is fucking fantastic, thank you very much! I’ll happily admin the shit out of it! But my life DOES have admin in it - and gaslighting weirdos who are both offended by that fact or desperate to deny it just make me laugh, is all. Why does it bother you that I genuinely have a lot of stuff to do?! What on Earth do you have at stake in this debate? If you don’t have a lot to do, I’m happy for you. I do, and so do many others on this thread, and sometimes it’s a lot of work …

Or maybe two-child families are the template for all acceptable existence - any less or any more and you’ve asked for your troubles?! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Is complaining about how busy you are on mumsnet part of life's admin?

I have one child. A selfish act according to many on here!

I just don't understand why someone would have lots of children, multiple activities for said children, pets, volunteering on top of full time jobs and then wonder why they are "burnt out." You create as much or as little so called "life admin" as you want to.

I am like you but I recently discovered inattentive adhd - it’s more common in people born as females maybe worth googling.

YANBU.

People who don't understand what you're talking about have obviously never had to do it.

Ha ha I forgot to put breathing and blinking on my list - thanks for that!

I would say that organising all the documents for travel - passports (three renewals, one new one), organising travel insurance and European breakdown cover, ferry passes and NHS passes, etc - all that together constitutes a job. Obviously I chose to go on holiday and as others have said, making choices like having children or going outside your home means you don’t get to count it as admin (or something?????) None of it is hard, but if I was getting paid to do it as a PA nobody would say ‘ha ha ha you call that work, you lazy fecker?!’ It’s a job that has to be done. The point is not that any one of them is hard. The point is there are a million of them!

i just really love this thread. People are so unbelievably mean-spirited and get so angry that other people might sometimes have a lot on. Why? Surely you’ve got to ask yourself - why are you offended that other people have a long to-do list?!

I would be interested to see how many of the respondents on this thread are men.

Surely if it's possible to get all of this done in a few minutes while making and drinking coffee, men could do it, right?

You're clearly a slacker, you should have been able to sort those passports out in under 2 minutes whilst simultaneously making a cup of tea!!

Well I would certainly never ever suggest that having one child is selfish wax.

i’d also suggest that some people volunteer (not me!) because they really care about an issue. Or they have activities for their children because it helps them or their child, about whom they also care. I don’t have any pets because - as you point out - I have four kids and that’s enough for me. People also have children with complex needs, family members to care for, complicated relationships, complicated finances - not all of these things are a choice. Even normal day-to-day life can be overwhelming for hundreds of reasons. When you throw any of these complications into the mix, it can take a lot of organising! And if you want to actually achieve anything new or go anywhere exciting, it might involve more work! Sometimes a task that sounds like nothing to one person can be hugely difficult for another.

i just don’t get why people can’t understand that and be empathetic instead of judging! But hey ho.

🤣 my thoughts exactly.

People who are genuinely busy won't have time to post on these threads IMO.

If you've got time to post numerous responses here about how busy you are and how much "admin" you have to do, you're clearly not as busy as you want to think you are 😉

Men act pathetic as if they can't do this stuff just so the women will take over to do it "properly."

YYY to your excellent post @Dreamylemon.

A life spent keeping all the plates spinning is no life.

Women are entitled to sit on their arses and drink a cup of coffee and do nothing else.

We could learn a lot from men. They are great at delegation.

i knew the ‘if you have time to moan about how busy you are, you aren’t really busy’ brigade would come out.

because if a woman isn’t working her arse off at 10.30 on a Friday night, how can she call herself a woman at all, eh? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Another fantastic example of making a long job out of short work. I can see why you can’t fathom how those of us with four kids manage when you make taking a preschooler for a haircut and telling his nursery he can come to a party into exhausting work.